Post on 16-Dec-2015
Economics
Consumption Productivity Technological
developmentsAdvertising and
marketingConsolidation Energy
consumption
Oligopoly Maldistribution of
wealth Standard of living Per capita income Benefit to MC & UCUniformity &
standardization
Normalcy in Economics
Welfare Capitalism – open shop American Plan - anti unionRepublican Formula
Increase tariff – Fordney-McCumber Decrease taxes
PaternalismTrickledown Economics – Mellon“Progressivism dissolved”
Weaknesses/Economic Instability
RR – over investment; poor managementTechnological unemployment Agriculture
McNary Haugen Bill ---ParityLabor unrest
1919 strikesMarket saturation –consumer
dependenceIncreased speculation
Strikes
Post-war labor unrest: Coal Miners Strike of 1919
UMW – Lewis; injunction; arbitration Seattle General Strike 1919
Ship yards – general support -Marines sent in Steel Strike of 1919
No negotiations; violence; troops Boston Police Strike of 1919
“no right to strike”; fired police
Normalcy in Politics
Republican leadership Return the Laissez Faire Strong ties business and gov’t
Deference to businessHarding – scandals
Teapot DomeCoolidge – business
gov’t & business togetherHoover – associationalismIncrease size of fed. gov’t
Civil Liberties
Supreme Court – 1920s – court begins to change direction and affirm civil liberties – striking down censorship – press/speech
Some affirmation of pluralism – Meyers v Nebraska 1922
ACLU is formed 1920
Social/Cultural IntellectualShared
Mass Culture – technologyMobility – auto = symbol Radio and Movies Materialism & consumption Increase in leisure time and activities “Individualism sacrificed to conformity.”
Consumerism
Consumer goods – electricity created new demands- refrigerators, vacuums, washing machines – but not frequent purchases
Automobile & supporting industries – Hwys, motels, service stations
Chain stores Credit purchases Status and popularity
Values Clash/Culture Wars
Secular - Modern Scientific Urban Impersonal & separate “Times yet to come” Freud – sexuality Einstein – relativity Heisenberg –
uncertainty principle Revisionist history –
Beard Cultural relativity – Boas
TraditionalReligiousRural, small town Face to face &
connected“Times gone by”“Americanism” Fundamentalism Anglo Saxon
superiority
Tuttle
“The Red Scare was an extension of the atmosphere of war, with its cult of patriotism, its generalized climate of violence and its need for an enemy.”
Overlapping of anti-German & anti- radical sentiment
Tuttle
“The structure of society in 1919 was as conducive to the Red Scare as to the Red Summer. Bolstered by the force of law and the nation’s mores, ‘the search for the inner enemy’ as sociologist George Simmel observed ‘became institutionalized after WWI; and then instead of being disapproved by members of one’s group for being prejudiced, one was punished for not being prejudiced’”
Red Scare
1919 - 3rd. International goal --> promote worldwide communism.
Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer (The Case Against the Reds)40 bombs sent 1919
Palmer Raids – 1920 “Soviet Ark” – deportation But also new concern for
civil liberties because of abuse
IWW in effect destroyed
Nativism/Xenophobia
Emergency Quota Act 1921 3% of 1910 census to 357,000
National Origins Act 1924* 2% of 1890 census By 1927 limited to 150,000 from Asia and S & E
Europe (excluded Far East – Japan & China) Canadians and Latin Americans exempted
500,000 Mexicans immigrated to the US
Immigration legislation = most lasting and significant effect of the counter attack & concerns about “Americanism”
Vanzetti “My conviction is that I have suffered for
things that I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical; and indeed I am a radical. I have suffered because I am an Italian; and indeed I am Italian. If it had not been for these things, I might have lived my life among scorning men. I might have died unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph.” Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding for man, as we do now by accident.”
Tuttle
“The Red Summer was obviously consistent with the nation’s history of racial violence. Yet the accentuated climate of violence in 1919 helps to account for the exorbitant number of race riots that year. It is not coincidental that the summer of 1919 also marks the beginning of the xenophobia and hysterically antiradical Red Scare.”
“Racial violence was a national problem.”
Growth and Tactics
Simmons – marketing – 5 millionAppeals to nativism and post war fears Targets labeled as “unamerican” and
threats to values (flappers, drinking)Blacks, Jews, Immigrants, Catholics Created sense of community and
belonging – incorporated familiesPolitical involvementQuick decline
Prohibition
18th Amendment Volstead Act – enforcedDecreased drinking ---butIncreased disrespect for the law
MC fashion
Boost to organized crime – bootlegging Capone
Religion - Fundamentalism
Literal interpretation of the bible Inerrancy, virgin birth, miracles,
creation, divinity of Christ, second coming –the “old time religion” – Billy Sunday
New marketing – McPherson -radioHostility toward any other belief Focus = the teaching of evolution – a
challenge to biblical creation storyLitmus test for AmericanismBilly Sunday – Aimee Semple McPherson
Scopes Trial
1925 – PR for Dayton Scopes and ACLU Darrow and BryanBryan – fear of social DarwinismSelf defeating victoryMencken
Literature – Lost Generation
Alienation DisillusionmentDisenchanted
Mencken Fitzgerald Hemingway Pound ElliotLewisStein
My People
The night is beautiful So the faces of my people The stars are beautiful So the faces of my people Beautiful also is the sun Beautiful, also, are the souls of my
people.
I, too Sing America
I, too, sing AmericaI am the darker brother,They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes.But I laughAnd eat well, And grow strong
Tomorrow,I’ll be at the tableWhen company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” then
“The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame…..And we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves.”
The New Negro
“If We Must Die” –Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogsHunted and penned in an inglorious spot While round us bark the mad and hungry
dogsMaking their mock at our accursed lot …Like men we’ll face the murderous cowardly
pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Ossian Sweet – defense of home